Dennis Allen post-game bytes: “I fully believe that I deserve the opportunity to come back… I want to be part of the rebuilding phase”

Raiders coach Dennis Allen was about as forceful and confident about his future as he could possibly be after losing his sixth consecutive game and posting his second consecutive 4-12 record.

He wants to be back. He said he expects to be back, and I think he understands that GM Reggie McKenzie wants to bring him back, also.

The twist, of course, could come from owner Mark Davis, who has insisted that McKenzie will talk with Allen, and then McKenzie will discuss the future with Davis–probably starting tomorrow.

It’s up to McKenzie and Allen to come up with a plan for the “reconstruction” as Davis has described this next phase for the Raiders, and for that plan to convince Davis that these two rough seasons–both ending on horrendous streaks–were a necessary part of the growth of this franchise.

Allen definitely wants to be part of the reconstruction. He’ll have a plan. Now it’s up to him and McKenzie to make sure it’s a good one, or at least one that Mark Davis approves.

Here’s some of what Allen said about his future and the team after the Raiders’ 34-14 loss to Denver…

—DENNIS ALLEN post-game partial transcript/

-ALLEN intro: Obviously not our best effort in the first half of the football game. We got beat by a better team today.

It was disappointing that we weren’t able to play better in the first half of the football game. Really, offensively we weren’t able to get
anything going.

Defensively, obviously that quarterback’s really good. I thought there were a couple times where we had some opportunities to potentially get off the field. I thought they put the throw in there when they needed to and that’s the difference between getting off the field and saving points and giving up points.

There were some positives in the game–our third blocked punt of the year I thought was a positive. It was good to see Nick Kasa get a touchdown there at the end of the game, another young player’s that gotten an opportunity to do some things for us.

Disappointing but we’ve got to move on from it.
-Q: How do you evaluate Pryor’s game today?
-ALLEN: You know, I’m going to hold off on that until I get a chance to really watch the tape. Obviously we weren’t really able to move the ball very well there in the first half of the football game.

We moved the ball better later in the game. We obviously offensively weren’t able to get a whole lot going in the game.

-Q: Did your team make progress this year?

-ALLEN: I believe it did. I believe it did in a lot of areas. Obviously it didn’t in the win-loss column.

But I believe there’s a lot of areas where we improved. I’m sure that’ll be something that I’ll sit down with Reggie and sit down with Mark Davis I’m sure and we’ll discuss the areas where we have improved.

-Q: Do you expect those meetings with Reggie and Mark Davis tomorrow?

-ALLEN: I’m not sure exactly when that’ll take place. I would expect that here pretty soon that we’ll sit down and have a conversation and figure out where we go from here.

-Q: You had bad penalties and bad center-QB exchanges again.

-ALLEN: Yeah, we don’t need to be snapping the ball on the ground. We don’t need to be making those type of mistakes. I mean, those are the type of mistakes that kill a football team, especially when you go out here and play a good team like that, to turn the ball over like that on, whatever it was, the 21-yard line.

That’s hard to overcome. I think we had two penalties in the game, if I’m not mistaken, I didn’t see the final count. But I thought we were better in that area this week than we had the previous few weeks.

-Q: Do you expect to be back next season?
-ALLEN: Yeah, I do. I expect to be back and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to come back. But those are decisions that somebody else is going to make… But yeah, I expect to be back.

-Q: Have you and Reggie sat down and talked about the future or will that be in your next meeting?

-ALLEN: Listen, we’ve discussed the future as we’ve gone on throughout the season. But we’ll sit down when this is all said and done, we get a chance to sit down and visit, we’ll discuss in further depth where we go from here, what the direction of the program is, and what we need to do to get to where everybody wants us to be, and that’s a playoff-contending team.

I believe that’s a possibility. I don’t think we’re there yet. But we’re going to continue to work to get there.

-Q: Mark Davis says these two years have been the deconstruction of the Raiders and now it’s time for the reconstruction. Do you see the off-season now really as the start of something?

-ALLEN: Absolutely. And like I’ve said before… Listen, it’s just the cards that we have to play with… This will be the first off-season where we’ve got some money that we can go out and try to acquire some free agents, to be able to sign some free agents on our football team that we’d like to keep here, and we’ll have a complement of draft choices to go out and begin to build this football team.

It’s been a tough couple of years. It’s been a tough couple of years on everybody–been a tough couple of years on you guys, been a tough couple years on the fans, it’s been a tough couple of years with everybody within the organization.

It’s something that needed to be done and we’re excited about the future and moving forward.

-Q: What positions do you need to strengthen?

-ALLEN: Listen, we’ve got a lot of areas where we’ve got to try to improve. I think as we go through the next couple of months, we’ll have the plan formulated, as exactly where we want to try to improve our football team through free agency, where we want to try to improve our football team through the draft.

-Q: Do you still feel the effort was there today/

-ALLEN: There’s no question it was there. There’s no question. Listen, when you look at the tape, guys are flying around, all right? We didn’t make enough plays. But there’s no lack of effort, there’s no lack of trying.

Watch the tape. ‘Cause that’s what the tape says.

[SKIPPED QUESTION ABOUT PEYTON MANNING]

[SKIPPED QUESTION ABOUT YOUR DEFENSIVE PLAN]

-Q: Was there ever thought of bringing McGloin into this game?

-ALLEN: Yeah, we thought about it. But we thought with the way the game was playing out, that we needed to go ahead and let Terrelle play and let him finish the game out and see if he could respond. And I thought he responded later in the game and made a few plays.

[SKIPPED QUESTION ABOUT DENVER’S DEFENSE]

-Q: Do you think there are quality free agents who will want to sign here after 4-12 seasons?

-ALLEN: Yeah, I do. I do. And I think it’s our job to go out and identify those guys, of who we want to try to bring into this program; and we will, we’ll go out and find good quality players that want to come here, want to play, want to be a part of this and want to be a part of building this up the right way and turning this thing around.

-Q: Do you wonder if you’ll still be here to do the rebuilding after these tough years?

-ALLEN: Not really. Again, like I said, that’s a decision that’s made over my head. I fully expect to be back.

I fully believe that I deserve the opportunity to come back here and get a chance to, as we’ve said, go through the deconstruction phase… I want to be part of the rebuilding phase.